James Buckley Quick Links

The New Year's Day special didn't go down at all well with fans of the sitcom.

The negative reaction to the recent reunion of ‘The Inbetweeners’ was so negative that one of its stars, James Buckley, says he feels “hated” as a result.

Buckley and his co-stars – Simon Bird, Joe Thomas and Blake Harrison – took part in a two-hour Channel 4 studio special on New Year’s Day titled ‘Fwends Reunited’, hosted by Jimmy Carr. Alongside old clips and highlights of the show, the cast answered questions and chatted about their time on-set together to mark the 10th anniversary of the sitcom.

However, many reacted badly to the show, seemingly because many misunderstood the nature of the show and had expected a full, one-off reunion episode – even though it had been clearly advertised at the outset that there would not be one.

Ed Westwick has joined up with 'The Inbetweeners' stars James Buckley and Joe Thomas as the stars on a sides-splitting new BBC Two comedy about a double-glazing salesman in the eighties entitled 'White Gold'. The 6-part series sees Damon Beesley at the helm and will premiere this month.

James Buckley, Ed Westwick and Joe Thomas star in 'White Gold'

'White Gold' is set in Essex in 1983 and sees 'Gossip Girl''s Ed Westwick as the charismatic salesman Vincent Swan. He is accompanied by his sales team of two; the morally questionable yet charming Fitzpatrick played by James Buckley and the rather more principled Lavender played by Joe Thomas.

Shia LaBeouf is well-cast in this freewheeling combination of comedy, romance and action. He plays a scruffy guy with no plans and nothing to lose, lost in a strange culture while falling in love with the wrong woman. It's not a particularly original premise, and much of what happens feels wildly improbable, but the characters and situations are so entertaining that we can't help but hold on for the ride.

It opens in Chicago, where Charlie (LaBeouf) watches helplessly as his mother (Melissa Leo) dies in hospital, asking her what he should do next. Then there she is appearing to him, telling him to visit Bucharest. "That's weirdly specific," he replies, but he follows her advice, and on the flight over has another encounter with a dead person. This one asks him to look up his daughter Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood) and give her a message. Of course, Charlie is instantly smitten, but tries to ignore the fact that Gabi's psychopathic husband Nigel (Mads Mikkelsen) looks easily capable of murder. As does the mobster club owner Darko (Til Schweiger) Charlie has a run in with while out on the town with his youth hostel roommates, two chucklehead Brits (Rupert Grint and James Buckley).

As the title suggests, Charlie feels like death is inevitable for him, especially now that he seems to have caught whatever that kid from The Sixth Sense had. LaBeouf gives Charlie just the right mix of hapless loser and quick-thinking resourcefulness, and his chemistry with Wood is tetchy and fun to watch. Meanwhile, the scene-stealing supporting stars Mikkelsen, Schweiger, Grint and Buckley add a terrific mixture of comedy silliness and dark peril. This seems to be director Fredrik Bond's main goal here: to blend genres from grim drama to sweet romance to goofy slapstick to Taken-style action violence.

Following years of theories and rumours surrounding the cursed state of Egyptian pyramids, a group of archaeologists venture to the site of the first tomb to be uncovered since 1922. They discover a three-sided pyramid filled with gas that kills one of their contract diggers. Unperturbed, the four intrepid adventurers head inside to learn the secrets of the tomb that has eluded historians and Egyptologists for centuries. When a booby-trapped floor causes the four to fall into the depths of the pyramid, they are faced with a labyrinth, deep below the ground. And they steadily learn that the tomb has been made to keep some dark secret trapped inside. With this revelation, the explorers realise that they are far from simply being trapped - that are actually being hunted.

The Inbetweeners 2 has officially scored the biggest UK box-office opening of the year so far, pulling in £12.5 million at the UK and Irish cinemas since its release on Wednesday (August 6, 2014). More than 10% of that total came from its opening night - a new record for a comedy movie.

The Inbetweeners are back on top of the box-office

However, despite its success, the comedy sequel failed to beat the takings of the first movie, which opened with £13.2 million in 2011. That may come as a surprise to analysts, given the traditional box-office clout of anticipated sequels.

Fans of the TV series and 2011 first movie probably won't mind that the filmmakers never bother to develop these characters at all. At least the four lead actors have plenty of charm to paper over the thinly written script, making the most of even the most simpleminded gags while playing up the traits that have kept fans coming back since the TV show debuted in 2008. The actors are now between 27 and 30, but the idiots they play are resolutely stuck in their teens.

Having finally survived high school, Jay (James Buckley) takes a gap year in Australia while his pal Will (Simon Bird) has a lonely first year at university. Even a visit from pals Simon and Neil (Joe Thomas and Blake Harrison) fails to cheer Will up, but a suggestion that they drain their student loans and head Down Under to visit Jay is more like it. Jay has painted a picture of sex-crazed party mayhem, but when they land in Sydney the reality is somewhat different. So when hot babe Katie (Emily Berrington) invites Will to come to Byron Bay with her gang of middle-class hippies, he drags his mates along. But these four guys fail to fit into the backpacking lifestyle, and instead head to the Outback to find Jay's ex.

The film opens in a nicely cinematic style, with slick spoofs of both Harry Potter and Scarface before settling into the usual groove: setting up each sequence as a possibility for sex before everything unravels into humiliating chaos. The problem is that this repetitive cycle is all set-up but almost never any pay-off. A waterslide sequence is a hilarious exception, building a queasy sense of suspense before landing a series of riotously revolting punchlines. But more often the characters are left staring into space before muttering, "OK then," before the screen fades to black as if it's time for an ad break.

The wait is finally over! The hotly anticipated second movie from The Inbetweeners is upon us, and after only two days in the cinema the response has been very positive from the public and critics alike.

The cast of The Inbetweeners

Will, Simon, Jay and Neil reunite in Australia during Jay's gap year. All of them have broken up with their girlfriends from the end of the last movie except Simon, who's in two minds about dumping Lucy because she's too clingy. We won't reveal anything else to you, except to say that chaos and swearing ensues.

The stars were out in force for ‘The Inbetweeners 2’ world premiere last night in London’s West End. The tale of four misfits trying to find their way as young men in the modern world continues with a trip to Australia.

In the sequel, following on from the boys’ trip to Malia, Simon, Will and Neil decide to join Jay on his gap year in Australia, while Simon struggles to dump his overbearing girlfriend.

Fans of The Inbetweeners have known for some time that the sequel to 2012's box-office busting big screen movie would probably be Simon Bird, James Buckley, Joe Thomas and Blake Harrison's last outing as Will, Jay, Simon and Neil. The boys - whom we first met at a secondary school somewhere in the Home Counties - have only aged about 3 years over an 8 year period of shooting the TV show and the movies, and they've convincingly argued to leave the quartet's story at that throughout just about every publicity interview for their new movie.

The boys are back - down under!

So it's fitting that The Inbetweeners 2 - out in cinemas today (August 6, 2014) - should be everything that drew some 3.7 million viewers to its season 3 finale in 2010.

Fans meet the cast of The Fault in Our Stars in London, actors hit the red carpet for Transformers 4 in Hong Kong, Take Down shoots in Wales, and new trailers bow for Guardians, the Inbetweeners sequel, the Equalizer movie and the Dumb and Dumber reunion ...

Fans lined the streets outside London's May Fair Hotel to glimpse the cast of the teen hit The Fault in Our Stars as they attended a special gala screening in advance of the film's opening in Britain this weekend. Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff and Laura Dern chatted to the fans as they attended the event along with Greg Wise and Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams. Read our The Fault in Our Stars review here.